Carmen and Salome: the theme of "femme fatale" in the ballets of Mukaram Avakhri - Rupkatha ...
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Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities (ISSN 0975-2935)
Indexed by Web of Science, Scopus, DOAJ, ERIHPLUS
Vol. 13, No. 1, January-March, 2021. 1-13
Full Text: http://rupkatha.com/V13/n1/v13n141.pdf
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v13n1.41
Published on March 28, 2021
Carmen and Salome: the theme of "femme fatale" in the
ballets of Mukaram Avakhri
Dilara Shomayeva
Kazakh National Academy of Choreography, 9 Uly dala avenue, Nur-Sultan, 010000,
Kazakhstan
E-mail: shomayeva.d@mail.ru, ORCID ID: 0000-0002-9447-5773
Abstract
The article deals with the image of the so-called femme fatale in Kazakh choreographic art in the case study
of two ballets by Mukaram Avakhri: "Carmen" and "Salome". The author analyzes the artist's interpretation
of the images of the two title characters as canonical cultural texts in the discourse on the history of female
representation. At present, the choreographic theory is at the junction of feminist thought and choreographic
interdisciplinary practice that strives to view the dancing female body through alternative means of cognition.
The stereotype of femininity in dominant conceptions of the Western culture can be deconstructed through
the new experience of female authors that influences the performer and the viewer in a new way. The
directing and plastique-based approaches that help the young female Kazakh choreographer to achieve this
are of interest to the authors.
Keywords: art history, ballet, female image, female choreographer, canon.
1. Introduction
Any discourse in the history of choreographic art of the late 19th and entire 20th centuries in Western
culture cannot avoid the intersection with issues of aesthetic, gender, and class ideologies. This is
particularly true of the topic of viewing the female body. To trace this relationship for us means to
understand how the stage movement is formed and controlled in the context of theatrical
performance as well as what the desires and expectations of the public and the invisible authors of
dance art bring to this process. The need to study the work of female choreographers of Kazakhstan
in the aspect of gender issues is dictated by the accumulated global experience and trends in
modern choreography. The above determines the relevance of this study. As a hypothesis, we
assume that groundbreaking representations of the female image in ballet can be created, on the
one hand, by the historical and socio-cultural characteristics that have developed in a particular
culture and, on the other hand, by the individual experience and personal characteristics of the
choreographer.
1.1. Background
Historical experience shows that it was women who often became dance innovators (I. Duncan, M.
Graham, P. Bausch, and others). The first essays on Western feminist art criticism which emerged
from the second wave of the feminist movement in the 1970s focused on highlighting and
© AesthetixMS 2021. This Open Access article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0
International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use,
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commercial re-use, please contact editor@rupkatha.com.
2 Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2021
presenting the names of female authors to the public. The results published in recent studies prove
the existence of female choreographers long before the names listed above, starting with Marie Salle
in France in the first half of the 18th century, Madam Marikita from the 1870s to 1920s, and Katti
Lanner in England at the same time. Susan Leigh Foster [1], Judith Chazin-Bennahum [2], Sarah
Gutsche-Miller [3], and Ivor Guest [4] talk about the suppression of their creative achievements in
art history, even though during their lifetime the artists' works in academic theaters and music halls
were very popular.
2. Methods
The methodology of this study is based on the works of prominent specialists A. Daly [9], G. Pollock
[7], E. Showalter [14], V. Midgelow [12], A. Koritz [29], and A. Ousmanova [6] who worked in a
descriptive manner, which implies the need to question the theoretical foundations of art history
and its patriarchal models of interpretation. The existing canons traditionally portrayed women in
the gender roles as the object of the "male gaze" [5]. It should be understood that currently, it is not
enough just to analyze how female choreographers in Kazakhstan are transforming the gender field.
The recognition of female choreographers is the first step in the canonization process. The more
recent works of Western feminist critics provide an opportunity to focus on how a new aesthetics
is formed and asserted on the Kazakh scene within the framework of the narrative theoretical
approach.
The possibility of a woman's multiple relationships with art is suppressed by the domineering
position of the male creator. The object of worship turns out to be so repressed that has no choice
but to admire the "narcissistic image of the male ego" [6, p. 467]. Such established patriarchal
models created a natural opinion for society about the female image in art either within the
framework of absolute positivity ("the ideal of beauty", "moral purity") or "depravity" and "lascivious
profligacy" of unworthy women. It is no coincidence that G. Pollock believes that the conception of
the images of women needs to be replaced by the notion of woman as a signifier in an ideological
discourse [7]. Therefore, one of the main tasks of gender issues in art is to ask female authors to
create new images of femininity beyond the already existing forms of representation. It is women
authors who can "construct a different viewing space, intervening in the cultural construction of
woman as fantasy object, replacing it with the 'subject-performer" [8, p. 256].
In the global history of choreography, this was largely achieved by the pioneers of modern
dance who indirectly defended feminist principles with the styles of the anti-ballet movement [9,
p. 307]. In Kazakhstan, during the second half of the 20th century, this trend continued. While the
stationary academic theater adhered to the classical and national direction, bold experimenters
actively rose to prominence on alternative venues, and most of them were female choreographers:
Gabbasov Sisters, Gulnara Adamova, Irina Dubrovina, and others.
The Astana Ballet Theater, founded in 2012, has become a unique team in view of its team
of performers, multi-style orientation, and repertoire policy. The main members of the troupe of
the new metropolitan collective consisted of 24 young girl-dancers. This feature contributed to the
fact that the experiment-oriented theater put on some original performances in the first seasons.
One of the brightest and most promising choreographers of the theater, in our opinion, is Mukaram
Avakhri. Professionally trained in the classical Russian ballet school and at the same time brought
up in a traditional Central Asian family with strong family ties, Avakhri, as a choreographer, has
the quality of "doubled sensibility which is capable of seeing more than in the West or the East
alone" [10, p. 46]. The choreographer's intellect has always been attracted by the concept of duality,
3 Carmen and Salome: the theme of "femme fatale" in the ballets of Mukaram Avakhri
"mirroring" when the division into black and white is rejected. The aesthetics of Avakhri's creations
hint at her desire to speak not directly but with symbolic associations that can be seen in all the
works. At the beginning of the creative career, Avakhri's aspirations were focused on the search for
new expressive forms of national dance which characterized the searches of all post-Soviet artists
of the 1990s in the process of the so-called "ethnic renaissance" [10]. The changes in the world of
the 2000s prompted Avakhri to move from introspection to social and political reality, and it was
then that the female image became the artist's main theme. Two of the most successful eponymous
ballets – Carmen and Salome – became the starting point of this research.
3. Results
Carmen and Salome are eternal canonical images, classical cultural texts, which, in our opinion, is
even more interesting for an alternative interpretation. Reinterpreting from a different perspective
can reveal the multi-layered contradiction and ambivalence in these works. The importance of such
a rethinking is to look back with a fresh look, to enter the old text from a new critical direction so
that the text becomes something more than another chapter in the history of culture. For women,
reinterpretation becomes an act of survival: "Until we can understand the assumptions in which we
are drenched we cannot know ourselves" [11, p. 18], – just as Vida Midgelow writes the work on the
coded bodies of the ballet canon that ballet canon reworkings have re-choreographed the body such
that a wider variety of bodily incarnations are encompassed allowing for divergence and
multiplicity, as opposed to uniformity and sameness [12]. This is exactly what happens with
Avakhri's works. Applying this approach to interpreting the images of Salome and Carmen, the
artist explicitly and consciously brings the complexity of these femmes fatales to the foreground.
The idea of the show "Carmen" to the music by Bizet-Shchedrin was born from two factors:
the choice of the director who knows how to find unconventional creative solutions and the
limitations due to the absence of male performers. As a result, the choreographer demonstrates "a
different mentality" [13, p. 48]. The artist makes an attempt to free her own and the viewer's gaze
from the traditional fixed attitudes imposed by the centuries-old ideology of female representation.
However, as Avakhri delves deeper into the issue, the artist immediately faces the problem of how
such a gender approach is constructed in works of art. The author (in this case, the choreographer)
seems to speak in two voices: the voice imposed by the dominant cliché in society and the voice
associated with the thoughts and feelings of the suppressed social group. That is, the voice
represents both "male" and "female" worldviews (double-voiced discourse) [14, p. 204]. The reason
for this paradox, in this case, is that the author of the original novel, Prosper Mérimée, introduces
Carmen to the world in 1845 through three narrators. All the narrators are men, each of whom
portrays Carmen in his way. Mérimée makes no mention of motives, feelings, and thoughts on
behalf of the female character herself. Only with the appearance of the opera by Georges Bizet 30
years later, the plot is given a deeper drama, in which "devilish passion, demonstrative destruction
of regulations ..., disarming courage in the face of the death of Carmen anticipated the impending
feminization" [15, p. 61].
The young Kazakh choreographer shifts the semantic emphasis inside the dramatic
performance and gives Carmen the chance to reveal herself. What is the secret of the name Carmen?
Femme fatale, actress who reached the heights in the art of flirting and seduction. What is her true
face? Avakhri tries to understand what drives the character and decides to disassemble her
personality into its components. Thus, five faces appear on the stage, the "five hypostases" of
Carmen [13, p. 48]. (Photo 1-2).
4 Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2021
1. The first variation of the five Carmens (photo by N. Kamashev for Astana Ballet)
2. The promotional photo of the Carmen performance (photo by A. Nurekin for Astana Ballet)
For the choreographer to follow the desire to reveal the very essence of the feminine
principle meant to abandon the storyline. Dramatic twists and turns are redundant in this case. The
basis of the performance is dance scenes, in which five ballerinas shine one by one and then in the
ensemble, making up a single image of Carmen. The character's versatility is represented,
respectively, by five sensual constants: temptation (red), premeditation (blue), playfulness (pink),
tenderness (yellow), and love of freedom (black). Therefore, an attempt is made to prove through
a well-known example that a "ballerina does not always have to be a passive sylph or seductive siren
any more, for sylphs can be powerful and sirens deeply moral" [16, p. 14]. With this technique, the
author also avoids painting in white and black as a timeless depiction of virtue and vice. Where one
ends and the other begins is up to the ballerinas themselves (not even the choreographer who
allows the dancers to show their individuality in the use of the choreographic text).
The personification of the moral purity of Micaëla, as opposed to the fatal Carmen, is being
reinterpreted. Avakhri admits that the poem by Garcia Lorca [17, p. 3] prompted the artist to think
that the character's image, captured alone at the beginning of the story in a ray of light, is like "the
prayer of all unfortunate women whose life is ordinary and boring" [18]. The first shot of Micaëla
dressed in an ordinary gray suit is associatively superimposed by the recipient on the first picture
of the famous Carmen Suite by Alberto Alonso. A feeling of a discrepancy between what was
expected and what was seen involuntarily arises: who are we looking at, is it Carmen? Further,
5 Carmen and Salome: the theme of "femme fatale" in the ballets of Mukaram Avakhri
meeting in a duet scene, Micaëla and Carmen act as characters of equal strength, different and close
at the same time, denying each other and responding to the pain and feelings of the other.
In visual design, the choreographer and the costume designer Olga Shaishmelashvili avoid
deliberate sexuality, dressing dancers in satin, medium-length dresses, simply cut. The "rebellious
Gibson flapper girl's" [13, p. 48] head is ascetically adorned with a black bob cut. This is the case
when external aesthetics affects how the movement and the body (in particular, female) react to it,
which is now positioned as a potential place of resistance, a place that is never just a passive object
but has the power of counter-strategic reinscription [12]. Only once during the performance, the
audience sees a naked body, and this scene becomes the culmination. We believe that the scene of
the revelation of the freedom-loving Carmen in black makes her the central figure of the ballet. The
expressive body of the dancer is de-erotized through the most dramatic musical fragment (in
Alonso's version – the fortune-telling scene) and the artistic content of the choreographic text.
During the dance, Carmen in black takes off her wig and dress which draws the audience's
attention, which from that moment on follows the choreographer's idea. Namely, a story-confession
about the endless loneliness of a tormented soul which sounds with emotional anguish, denying
the muteness of a naked body. The mirrors used in scenography are symbolic as ambiguous symbols
of the feminine principle. One can hide from the crowd but one cannot run away from oneself.
The significance of symbols in Avakhri's ballets can hardly be underestimated. In "Carmen",
the method of selecting a symbol refers to the generalization of the recipient's "various defects of
visual activity" [6, p. 472]. For example, the beginning of the performance opens with a view of the
original curtain, decorated with black fringe like the hem of a Spanish skirt. When the curtain rises,
outlines of bare graceful female legs appear below, which refers to the aesthetics of voyeurism. In
the final act, after the last common variation, the five Carmens again retreat into the depths of the
stage and, turning their backs to the audience, hide behind the hanging fabric. In the third scene
(the only one based on an excerpt from Bizet's opera "La Taberna de Lillas Pastia" which is absent
in R. Shchedrin's adaptation), the theme of voyeurism is supported by a purely scenographic
method. In the space above the middle of the stage, shutters are vertically suspended, behind which
the Spanish women hide and observe what is happening, dressed like majas – young Andalusian
maidens.
To sum up, let us say that the show "Carmen" by Avakhri appeared at a time when the
female voice sounding from the stage no longer shocked the public. Undoubtedly, female
choreographers of Kazakhstan had raised this theme earlier, for example, in the performance of
"Female Dogs" by the Gabbasov sisters, but if we talk about representation as a deconstruction of
traditional categories in art created by men for male authors, then:
- the work represents the first such experience for understanding the role of the female gaze
in Kazakh art;
- for the first time, the author aims to reveal the psychological world of the main character
from the inside;
- in the process of constructing images, the choreographer entrusts a large role to the
performers' interpretation, thereby allowing the dancers to talk about themselves.
- for all the novelty of the author's idea, the theme did not find sufficient choreographic
embodiment. The text does not differ in the richness of vocabulary, the five images of Carmen, with
external distinctive attributes, do not have their own individual "faces".6 Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2021
However, some obstacles will be overcome already in the next ballet, in which the
choreographer again turns to the theme of the femme fatale – Salome. If Carmen in Avakhri's
interpretation appears to be diverse, sometimes strong and free, sometimes soft and vulnerable,
sometimes bright and alluring but always equally lonely, then in Salome, the lambency of the facets
of the character's personality becomes difficult to catch due to the variety of existing interpretations
of the original work. The libretto is based on the eponymous drama by the English poet and
playwright Oscar Wilde. It was Wilde's aesthetics with illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley that served
as the basis for the idea of the play, according to Avakhri. Full of contradictions and aesthetic
sophistication, the text of the drama attracted the choreographer's imagination, in which the ideas
of beautiful ugliness, good and evil, love and madness coincided: "I am excited about the dark and
the light in man. These are the facets of a single whole. We would not know what beauty is, not
having been horrified by ugliness or vice. Human nature is inexplicable" [18].
Salome (fr. Salomé) is a one-act tragedy written by Oscar Wilde in French in 1891, translated
into English, and published in London in 1894. The tragedy is based on the biblical myth of the
Jewish king Herod Antipas' stepdaughter. Although the name of Salome is not given in the biblical
text, we owe the character's name to Flavius Josephus who mentions Salome in the Antiquities [19].
The story also formed the basis for Gustave Flaubert's story "Herodias" from the collection Three
Stories. If in Flaubert's version Salome is a puppet in the mother's hands in an attempt to get
revenge on the prophet John who publicly condemned the marriage of Herod and Herodias, then
Wilde introduced an unexpected detail into the ancient legend: the cause of the prophet's death is
Salome's love for him. John angrily refuses the princess' ardent confessions while the saint is not
prone to earthly temptations. However, Salome, consumed by passion, longs for a kiss, even if the
price is the life of the loved one. Having performed the Dance of the Seven Veils, Salome deceives
Herod and demands the head of the prophet John, who is in prison, as a reward.
Wilde's elaboration of the psychopathic concept of Salome's image is believed to have been
inspired by the Danish novelist Joris-Karl Huysmans and Gustave Moreau's paintings Salomé
Dancing before Herod (1876) and L'Apparition (1876) [20, 21].
The reaction of the public after the premiere was mixed but more often it was expressed
rather sharply. A reviewer for the Times wrote: "…an arrangement in blood and ferocity, morbid,
bizarre, repulsive and very offensive in its adaptation of scriptural phraseology to situations the
reverse of sacred" [22, p. 133]. Bram Dijkstra said in his work "Idols of Perversity": "The spectacle of
Salome's bestial passion makes Herod shiver… But the outrages of feminine desire continue. In a
passage in which Wilde directly equates semen and the blood which feeds man's brain, Salome,
woman, the vampire hungry for blood, tastes the bitter seed of man, depredates the spirit of holy
manhood" [23, p. 398].
The public resonance aroused interest in the play, and very soon an opera production of the
work emerged. The Dresden premiere of a one-act opera by Richard Strauss based on a libretto in
German translation by Hedwig Lachmann took place in 1905.
Interpreted as an expressive drama, full of metaphors, symbolism, energy, beauty,
exoticism, and sensuality, the opera conveys the decadent nature of Wilde's work, the playwright's
free and painful decorativeness, in which Strauss manages to notice features that are very relevant
for the era – features of the cruel passion, hidden feelings of horror in the face of dark psychological
conflicts, already expressionistic [24]. Some textual changes, including abridging in some places,
led to the transformation of the image itself: "Wilde's image of Salome as an inexperienced and
fairly innocent young girl is shifting more and more towards a sex-seeking woman" [21, p. 159].
"While in Wilde's text Salomé's monstrosity always threatens to regress into adolescent7 Carmen and Salome: the theme of "femme fatale" in the ballets of Mukaram Avakhri
naughtiness, Strauss's dramatic soprano is a creature of power and steely invincibility. Even her
dance, meant as tableaux of sensuality, is performed with the strong determination of an
Amazonian general, behind her a 'brazen, convulsive orchestra'" [25, p. 146]. However, Wilde
appears to have repeatedly tried to offer an aestheticized, symbolic interpretation of the character
and the play as a whole, which is characteristic of his writing style in general: "The very choice of
writing in French for Wilde partly was an aesthetic choice to 'enlist the aid of language against
nature ... where words become precious images'" [26, p. 323]. In this sense, Wilde's aestheticism is
familiar to Avakhri. The choreographer refuses the musical material of Strauss, although there were
attempts to start work with the composer: a few years earlier Avakhri created the choreographic
miniature "Eclipse" for the same Strauss Dance of the Seven Veils. However, when creating the
ballet, the choreographer makes a choice in favor of the music of the contemporary Turkish
composer Fazıl Say (the ballet uses a compilation from Istanbul Symphony op. 28 and from "1001
Nights in the Harem", op. 25, as well as the Turkish folk song "Katibim" in the orchestration by Fazıl
Say). Although Avakhri often refrains from direct statements, it is the musical material that creates
the necessary outline of sensuality, allowing the director-choreographer to focus on other tasks.
Being not only a choreographer-director but also the author of the artistic concept of the
play, Avakhri again very subtly uses symbols – this is, first of all, the moon (full moon), which
becomes bloody during the performance and then is completely absorbed by the darkness. The play
of light, acting as scenery, enveloping the entire space of the open stage without curtains, according
to critic U. Alieva, introduces a semantic subtext: we see bright "divine" streams of light in the form
of intersecting crosses in scenes with Jochanaan, dim light on the dead Salome in the finale. Wilde's
symbolism is also reflected in the clothes of the four main characters: Salome's silvery tunic ("it
looks like a silver flower"), purple colors in the robes of Herod and Herodias ("purple like Caesar's
mantle"), and Jochanaan's canvas robe [27].
Turning to history, we can find confirmation of the words of the scholar Amy Koritz that
Wilde's inability to convince his readers of the symbolist reading of the play is explained by their
needs and the needs of their culture in denying and affirming the power and threat of an exotic
woman [28, p. 75]. The main factors in the rethinking of female imagery in the early 19th century led
to the fact that ideas of gender equality, starting with the Great French Revolution, turned into
polemics about the place of women in society and into the struggle of the first feminists for their
rights. Significantly, the Revolution itself in France was portrayed as a woman (Eugene Delacroix
"Liberty Leading the People"). Z. Freud's philosophical reflections about the art of that period boiled
down to the fact that this was an attempt to balance the man's neurotic fear of a woman at the
expense of aesthetic pleasure [29]. The onset of a spiritual crisis led to a natural search for a cultural
alternative and a new religion. If during the period of romanticism the theme of the East was of
some decorative interest, then by the early 19th century the invasion of the Eastern myth as invisible,
wise, magical, and enchanting was significant and gave impetus to rethinking Western heritage in
art. In the landmark work "Orientalism", Edward Said accurately sums up the idea that "oriental
culture and cultural forms have been exoticized due to the operation of orientalism... The "Orient"
and the "Occident" are man-made" and are more to do with imaginative geography than a fact of
nature". Said usefully identifies long-lived and powerful forces of oppression and argues that the
images and stereotypes constructed by Western artists and scholars about the "other" have
produced unhelpful myths which repress and exoticize their subjects [30, p. 5]. Further, Mario Praz
outlines the relationship of exoticism to eroticism: "A love of the exotic is usually an imaginative
projection of a sexual desire" [31, p. 207]. Thus, in Western culture, pervasive sexuality and frozen
eternity characterize Western stereotypes of the East. Thus, Wilde's Salome, exotic/erotic and
mystical/transcendental, fits into both categories in the context of the time [28, p. 77], which is8 Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2021
exactly what Avakhri uses in the choreography. The artist does not attempt to get away from what
Vida Midgelow expressed as "slipping into and around the canon – into the heart of dominant
Western culture" [12, p. 46]. The author seems to deliberately layer texts, creating complex
ambiguous facets where each of them is "an infinitely varied code of information, where one can
find new allusions and reminiscences" [27]. A little-known expressive musical score contrasts with
the minimalism of the design, the graphic nature of the poses. The layers are also spatial: vertical
(light rays and the effect of descending devices), horizontal (three moving levels of the stage, one
of which is a table on wheels that occupies the entire width of the stage, the use of an orchestra
pit), diagonal (rearrangements of the corps de ballet, accent scenes in different corners of the stage).
We understand the semantic meaning of Sai's oriental music as a desire to "play by the rules", but
since the score is modern, the sound is different and fresh. This benefits the performance, in which
the author raises universal human questions about the present day. Avakhri enjoys the right to be
a female choreographer in the same way that Isadora Duncan embraced the socially privileged
attitude of women towards nature to add value to her art. Avakhri is frank without pretense and, at
the same time, uses expressiveness sparingly, pictorial, and allegorical. In the choreographer's
plastique interpretation, a hint of movement takes on equal importance with the pas itself, minor
turns of the head and looks become key accents, and pauses are no less important than movement.
As for the central character of the ballet, Salome, Avakhri also interprets her as beautiful
and terrible, covered and naked, the portrayed and the artist. The author believes that one of these
personality manifestations is impossible without the other. In the beginning, Salome appears as the
light in a kingdom without the sun, in a kingdom where the moon shines. Salome's appearance is
light as if the character is looking for meaning in the surrounding dark world where both relations
between people and the whole system of values are destroyed, where her desires and actions are
inevitable. Contrary to expectations, the dance of the Seven Veils is not the center of the
performance. Traditionally, the dance of seduction was performed in an erotic context, Salome
would take off seven capes and remain naked by the end of the performance. This episode sparked
a keen interest in performers and creators, in part because Wilde's play contains no description of
the dance. As mentioned above, contrary to the author's desire to portray Salome outside of the
femme fatale stereotype, critics tended to view Salome's dance as the most sexualized moment in
the narrative, the moment when the character is completely immersed in the physical. According
to Arthur Symons, the weakness of Wilde's play lies in the fact that Herod's oath was given before
Salome's performance and not in response to the dance [32, p. 178], which gives the audience an
idea of the dance as the culmination of Salome's sexual power. For example, one of the first Salome
dancers was the British dancer Maud Allan, whose big debut in the "Vision of Salome" dance was
met with a predictably loud response and was called a "delicious embodiment of lust" [28, p. 35]
and the transformation of "little Salome into a woman" [28, p. 43]. Salome's sexuality is inevitable,
which makes the stubborn denial or condemnation of this sexuality by both artists and viewers
inevitable as well. Avakhri creates a sensual, somewhat aggressive solo, which, in terms of the
strength of its growth, only continues the figurative line of Salome from the beginning of the
performance (Photo 3-4).9 Carmen and Salome: the theme of "femme fatale" in the ballets of Mukaram Avakhri
3. Salome's dance (photo by A. Nurekin for Astana Ballet)
Therefore, removing the culmination moment from the Dance of the Seven Veils, as a
female artist, Avakhri can build another space of action, in which, through the intervention, the
artist creates the construction of a female image not only as an object of fantasy. In Avakhri's show,
the center of the narrative and emotional action becomes the phantom duet of Salome and the
prophet which ends with a welcome kiss and a feeling of complete emotional devastation: "... in
Salome's love dreams, the 'naked' soul of the character is revealed – tender, sensual, burning" (Photo
4). Even the dancer's plastique changes – from quiveringly pulsating to incredibly soft, enveloping,
and at the same time something flighty. Thus, the final component of the duet is terrible: having
achieved the long-awaited kiss from Jochanaan, Salome wraps her legs around his shoulders and
coldly snaps his neck like an executioner [27].
4. The duet of Salome and Jochanaan (photo by A. Nurekin for Astana Ballet)10 Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2021
The culmination is followed by the final scene, there are six of them in the one-act ballet.
The author of this article is also a co-author of the libretto. We do not see the need to cite the entire
libretto verbatim, but the description of the last scene is of interest. The scene is called "The Sunset
of the World" and contains an address directly to the viewer: "Do not avert your gaze, the feast
continues. But fiery voluptuousness is replaced by satiety. The outlines of feelings are blurred: there
is neither joy nor horror, only humility before the irreversibility of the end". The performance ends
with a musical and corps-de-ballet reprise of the first scene, logically closing the circle: "The feast
continues again". However, the second time the scene develops to a state of agony, the characters'
inner conflict reaches its climax. The final image is a picture of devastated guests of the feast, slaves,
Herod and Herodias, scattered, all of them mixed and it is impossible to distinguish between them.
Sai's fading music accompanies the characters on their last journey. Lost, blind, and deafened, the
characters scatter and fall into the abyss (in the stage solution – the empty orchestra pit). What this
black pit represents, we do not know, but it is something finite and timeless. Someone falls into
nothingness, someone is indifferent and doomed in their action, someone is rapidly moving
towards their end. However, everyone goes to the end to meet the unknown, realizing that now
there is no other way. While the figure of the torn Salome lies on the dais, all the rest go to the
"other world". If Wilde creates an atmosphere of anxiety in the drama, the expectation of incredible
events, perhaps an impending catastrophe, then Avakhri seems to conclude that the tragedy of
Salome today is already possible for everyone.
The topic of revising canonical images such as Carmen and Salome is always burdened with
the binding factor of power and aesthetic values that were established by the great creators of these
images. Given the opportunity for such practice, modern directors and choreographers strive and
establish new models, expand the canonical cultural text, adequately reflecting the vision of women
and non-Western authors who have been deprived of this right throughout history. Since in this
case, Avakhri develops the theme of the artist's best, without exaggeration, ballets in images created
outside Avakhri's culture by European male authors, images that have a long complex stage life in
the established designated role of femme fatale. What makes the images of such "divas" interesting
today for a young author and the author's audience in Kazakhstan? In this vein, we understand
Steven Price's words about Salome: "Salome may take a biblical story as its ultimate source, but it
stands as a complex and beguiling comment upon its own historical time and its author’s place
within it, so we should consider conditions where this creation was rewritten" [33, p. 22]. The
revision can cover temporal, geographic, and even genre conditional intersections. Avakhri's female
characters exist outside this framework, the artist's language is universal and, as far as possible,
devoid of any signs of belonging. Just as such works can be considered not only as a set of dance
scenes but also in the aspect of the used methods of storytelling based on the body and their
existence in interaction with perception and spectator interpretation. If in "Carmen" an attempt is
made to free oneself from the masculine type of language, in which the striving for a single truth
and logic prevails, to blur the system of previously created meanings by searching for "feminine"
handwriting, then in "Salome" it becomes clear that the author decides, directorially and
choreographically, to prefer the modernity of the narrative, reflects on how the viewer will perceive
this topic today, when any gender clichés are no longer so relevant. Avakhri's female characters are
close to today's audience but the choreographer narrates in the language of dance, where the body
is the main subject and object at the same time. Ballet's gender vocabulary has become so
expressive, and the dancers' bodies have undergone pressure and the transformation alien to
nature, that it casts doubt on how it is possible to ensure equal existence for the male and female
bodies on stage. One of the critical features of the dance body revision is the re-choreography of
the cultural source in the direction of resistance to order. Although, in any case, it is difficult to11 Carmen and Salome: the theme of "femme fatale" in the ballets of Mukaram Avakhri
offer a completely new interpretation, the works under discussion embody the program of anti-
canonical discourse. The images of Carmen and Salome created by the choreographer exist in a
double frame, at the same time confirming and questioning their sources. Avakhri has managed to
transform ideas about a familiar text, which can help the viewer realize their assumptions and
change the perception of the past and present in art.
Naturally, in "Carmen" we still observe (partly due to the lack of male performers) a feminist
manifesto, when male characters are present on the stage only nominally in the form of mannequins
(Зhoto 2). The male characters are ruled by women who reign on the stage. However, female
dominance is not ensured by this fact, the structure of the performance is directed in such a way
that the man has no place in it, and the woman becomes its center. If, for example, Balanchine
nevertheless introduces a man into his women's ballets to highlight the female dancer, then
Avakhri's "Carmen" does not leave such a chance. In "Salome" this line is less noticeable, but female
characters again dominate the stage, being symbolically and literally above men: Herodias walks
on the backs of the slaves and Salome sits on the prophet's back in the middle of the performance
and then steps on his chest after the cherished kiss. In doing so, the author seems to be back on the
path once traveled. What is characteristic of the author's style, in terms of time and geographical
location, is that Avakhri's "female gaze" on the issues of separation and unity, mental loneliness and
plurality in "Carmen", a personal choice between vice and virtue, duality (two sides of the same
coin), division and unity in "Salome" ultimately suggests the unity of the main antagonism, namely:
female and male. The scope of the theme and its implementation in Avakhri's work is universal.
Interest in Carmen indicated the artist's attitude to the viewer's demand and desire to give the
image the accompanying qualities of a femme fatale, which then led in "Salome" to full exposure in
the final act: we see what we want to see, endowing the stage images of the femme fatale women
Carmen and Salome with our ideas.
As a prominent young choreographer, Avakhri can raise complex social issues in her works
while remaining somewhat detached from the existing canons. The theme of the femme fatale in
ballet is always mysterious and as if not directly explained to the end, but the theme is always
something more than just representation. No classical cultural text today can be fully represented
in one stage solution but can be embodied in different ways with different people. This is the main
and well-known theatrical truth. However, the mystery is not the many incarnations of the text but
the still unknown lives hidden in the text which can be revealed for the modern spectator and
performer. The complexity of the embodiment for the Kazakh choreographer was that the critical
climate in the art of the 21st century is accompanied by the socio-cultural consequences of such
movements as poststructuralism, postcolonialism, feminism, queer, and postmodernism. Finding
an approach to understanding performers and spectators, considering their historical and personal
experience, becomes the most important task for authors. Avakhri's solution and its
implementation in the choreographer's work, the artist's view on the creation of female canonical
images helped to create innovative representations of the female image in ballet.
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